


Postcard from a Boathouse

by Kicker



Category: Fallout 4
Genre: Alcohol, Canon-Typical Violence, F/M, POV Alternating, Smoking, Smut, Spoilers, Swearing, Timeline Fuckery
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-04-12
Updated: 2016-05-11
Packaged: 2018-06-01 18:30:05
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 14
Words: 20,005
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6531229
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Kicker/pseuds/Kicker
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>After the events of Blind Betrayal, the Brotherhood's newest recruit disappeared without a trace. She's been gone for 66 days. Nobody knows where she is. Nobody's saying it out loud, but there's a very good chance that the Commonwealth has finally chewed her up.</p>
<p>Unwilling to accept that eventuality, Arthur Maxson set out to prove it wrong. Even now, as he lies bloodied and bruised and covered in the dust of the Commonwealth he's supposed to be here to save, he can't believe it. It's not over. It can't be.</p>
<p>He has to find her.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> This is a thing I wrote because I wanted to play around with timelines and POVs. Also Maxson. Obvs.
> 
> aka 'Tess your new fic is ready, keep writing your smut but come read this too' ;)

August 6th, 2289  
Tuesday  
14:00

Air rasps painfully in his throat, as though it's the first time he's taken a breath. It's not. Despite everything that's been thrown at him, he's lasted twenty-one years, nearly eight thousand days, breathing all the while.

Maybe it just feels like the first, because he thought he'd taken his last. He'd settled down against this wall, and said goodbye. To everything. To everyone.

Then something brought him back.

It wasn't the pain, that came later. It wasn't the heat, that came later still. It was a thought. A feeling.

_I'm not done yet._

_I have to find her._

That's when the pain hit.

It's concentrated in his left leg, a savage pain that feels like burning teeth, clamping around the limb, tearing through his boots to rip into the skin beneath.

There's a secondary focus in his right shoulder. A raw pain, this one, like something lodged in the flesh, grinding against bone with every movement he makes.

The last is a dull throb that hovers over his left eye. Nothing, in comparison to the rest, though he can feel a slow, lazy drip on his cheek that can only be blood.

Fresh blood. He's still bleeding.

So he's not dead.

He's not done yet.

The heat is next to make itself known. It covers most of his body, but it's not the searing pain of fire on skin, it doesn't scream at him to move, move now. It's radiated heat, like standing too close to a stove. Or the sun, burning down from a summer sky.

It is August. Early August. But last he remembered, it was morning. The sky a hazy shade of blue, the sun so low that it wasn't even cut by the accelerating blades of the vertibird.

How long has he lain there? Minutes? Or hours? Where even is he?

There's barely any sound to identify the location. There's an indistinct hum, that may be a creation of his ears, or maybe a distant insect. A ticking, some distance away, irregular, not a mine. From behind him comes a whisper of something else. Something gentler.

Open water.

The thought of water brings with it a pang of thirst. His lips are dry and sore; he tries to moisten them with his tongue, but his mouth is filled with grit and the all-too-recognisable taste of blood. He swallows, painfully, and checks his teeth. All there, save for the gap on the right side. The deathclaw's toll.

To the victor go the spoils. With the victor remain the scars.

They'd tried to persuade him to have replacements for the lost teeth; he refused. When he dreams, rare as that is, the teeth are still there.

He presses the tip of his tongue against his gum.

Not dead or dreaming.

He opens his eyes. It's bright, so bright that his eyes snap shut again on reflex. Slowly, he persuades them open, a fraction of an inch at a time. Blue above, grey below. Darker shapes scattered across the grey, slowly, painfully coming into focus.

At his feet, a pair of mutant hounds spill their guts on the ground, savaged by a blade that's still lodged in one of their necks. Stabbed in, with almost the last of his strength, before he dragged himself back to the wall and waited for whatever came next.

Beyond them, a green-skinned abomination scorched by laser fire, brutal spiked board still held tight in its hand. A man, beside it, looking up at the sky with a glassy-eyed stare. His back is twisted, his arms splayed, his flight suit almost entirely red with blood.

Lancer-Knight Conrad. Twenty-four years old. No known relatives. Recently promoted for continuous good service.

He curses at the loss, and moves his head, prepared for an explosion of pain that does not come. He touches a hand to his temple. The blood is sticky, drying. The flow is stopping.

But he's still not dead.

The ticking seems to be coming from the shell of an old-world car, about forty feet away. It's tipped on its side, now, the metal cooling, the core probably spewing rads into the air. The explosion had thrown him off balance, far enough for the mutant on top of the hospital building to get his shot in. A bullet. A .50. He'd been spun around by the force of it, falling to his knees, lucky not to take another shot to the back. By the time he turned around and took his rifle in the other hand, it was too late for the Lancer-Knight.

Just beyond stands an open power armor frame, plating dented and scorched and utterly broken. The fusion core had been depleted by the ferocity of the initial attack, crippling the suit, leaving its occupant unable to defend himself. He'd managed to hit the exit controls but with three mutants charging toward him, he had no chance.

Knight-Sergeant MacDonald. Thirty-two years old. A wife and two children, in Rivet City. Made his rank after the battle for the airport.

Over to the left, smoke still rises from the wreck of the vertibird, everything in it and around it charred or molten. A missile had screamed up from the hospital building, slamming into it with a crash that jarred every bone in his body. A direct hit, from point-blank range. The Lancer-Knight had done an outstanding job to get them even close to landing; the Knight-Sergeant just as much for dragging them both out and throwing them toward safety.

Then another missile had spun toward the 'bird. And that was the end of it. And all of them.

Faint shouts echo out from the hospital buildings; more mutants, maybe the very one that had brought them down. Anger rises in him, but much as he might like to storm the place and take revenge for his lost men, he's down, and wounded. He doesn't need to look at the laser rifle abandoned by his side to know that the cells are depleted. He has to retreat.

He's learned that much, in the last few years.

He tests his limbs. The left arm and right leg seem able to support him. The other two... well. The other two are coming along for the ride whether they like it or not.

He half-pushes, half-pulls himself up, bracing his hand on the wall. He concentrates hard on the texture of the stone under his fingers, the dead grass in between them, the warmth of the sun beating down over him. Anything that isn't the pain.

But he's up. On his feet. The Commonwealth hasn't beaten him.

He's not done yet.

No matter what's happened, he still has to find her.


	2. Chapter 2

November 2nd, 2288

All preliminary recon missions into the Commonwealth had been failures, losing contact within months, sometimes just weeks. After some deliberations, the decision had been made to enter the region regardless. There was too much at stake to waste time waiting on information that might never come.

They had docked at the airport, and launched a successful offensive against the infestation of feral ghouls in the shattered terminal buildings. It was not without cost; some soldiers were lost, and he himself sustained some injuries.

Cade had patched him up after the battle, and warned him to stop taking so many risks.

"What's the point in leading if you can't do it from the front?" he'd replied, but Cade had only shaken his head, as though he did not understand. Perhaps he could not.

That had been in early October.

Squads were sent out to scout the area and identify local supply routes; to commandeer them, if necessary. Radio signals were being closely monitored; the region was a cacophony of the same, everything from ham radios clutched in the hands of dried-out skeletons, to the pitiful stations operated from Diamond City and the local militia's so-called Castle.

Thirteen days after arrival, a signal had piped up louder than all the rest of them combined. It came from the north, and told of the survival of Gladius Squad. Their numbers were somewhat depleted, they were low on supplies, but they were still fighting and collecting valuable information and technology. Vertibirds were despatched to collect their reports and findings, and once that was done, retrieve the unit themselves.

In the meantime, he had other matters with which to busy himself. He had once read of a military general of ancient times who commanded great respect from his troops because he made a point of learning their names and spending time among them. He tried to do the same. It was difficult; this diplomacy, or whatever it could be called. It did not come naturally to him. He would far rather have been out in the fray with a gun in his hand than attempting geniality. But such is the cost of bearing his name.

Maxson.

Over the course of a number of days, he summoned the entire crew to him, in small groups. To remind himself of their faces, their names, their existences. To remind them of their duties, of their mission in the Commonwealth. And perhaps also to make sure they saw him, saw the bandages on his hands, and knew that he was at their head even if he couldn't be on the ground with them.

During the fourth session of the sixth such day, there was a disturbance at the back of the room. Heavy footsteps, metal on metal. A face, towering above them all, sporting thick eyebrows, one scarred right through. Danse. Paladin. No known relatives. The remains of Gladius Squad, then. Perhaps even their new recruit. He'd read a lot of reports about this newcomer. A pre-war relic, said some. A valuable asset to the Brotherhood, said others.

Time would tell.

He finished his address, and dismissed the group. Sure enough, the Paladin was not alone. He stood beside a woman of average height, small next to the suit of armor. Dark hair. Dark eyes. She stood straight, shoulders relaxed, a pleasant smile on her face.

"Elder," she said. She crossed the room toward him, hand extended. A pre-war greeting.

He kept his hands clasped behind his back.

She pulled back her hand, and pressed it to her chest in a hesitant salute. Her eyes dropped, just for a moment. Then the faintest breath escaped her lips, and the smile was back. Like a mask.

Perhaps that should have been a warning. If it was, he didn't heed it. Danse trusts her, he thought. Danse respects her. That is as good a reason as any to accept her.

That, and the brown eyes that were now raised and looking directly into his.

He confirmed her new rank. He explained her next mission. It would be a test, of sorts. There could be no special treatment for an Initiate - now Knight - recruited in the field. Untrained she may be, but she has a job to do. They all do.

On dismissal, Danse saluted smartly. As did she.

If nothing else, she was a quick learner.

~~~

"Well," she said, when she was out of hearing distance of the Elder. "That went well."

"I thought so too," said Danse, with a cheerful smile, craning his neck slightly to look out of his armor.

One day, she thought, she'd teach him what sarcasm was.

"He seems a very serious man," she said. A serious man with a hard face and icy cold eyes. Looked like he'd rather kill her than look at her. Like everyone else in the Commonwealth.

"He is," said Danse. "He is exceptionally dedicated and that's why I... why all of us would follow him anywhere. Even to a place like this."

You didn't follow him here, she thought, he sent you ahead of him.

She didn't say it.

Also, asshole, this was my home. I get to insult it. You don't.

She didn't say that, either.

He led on, and with every step she took through the ship, she worried that he could hear, that everyone could hear the bottle of vodka sloshing away in her pack. She'd wrapped it in all the spare clothes she'd got, but it still seemed to want to be heard.

Or maybe she was just going mad.

2nd November. One year and ten days since... everything. She'd picked up the bottle a couple of weeks ago, knowing that the anniversary was coming up. She'd thought that maybe she'd be able to grab a few hours, sit looking soulfully into the distance, sipping vodka from a cut crystal glass. Maybe have a couple of cigarettes, just to really create the perfect melancholic atmosphere.

The Commonwealth had other plans. Danse had other plans. He'd kept her busy, so busy that if she didn't know for a fact that he had no idea of the significance of the date, she might have thought it deliberate. Always with instructions, always with plans, always with something else to do, something that usually involved guns and violence.

Today was very different, though. Stand in this room. Look pleasant, be polite, show your best face. This is an influential man, you have to get him on your side.

Finally something she'd actually had some training for. Half of her education had been spent preparing for situations like this. The half spent outside of the lectures and the books, of course. The networking sessions, the volunteering, the group projects. Her fellow students were rage-inducing, but that was probably part of the training too. She'd found a facial expression she could adopt that even if she wanted to howl with rage or despair, to all but the most observant she would still look attentive and interested. Pleasant, even.

It also looked pretty good in photographs. And one of those photographs had survived the apocalypse. She caught sight of it, on that first day on the Prydwen. In a small room, filled with files and papers, talking to a man with round glasses who was telling her in his oh-so-smart English accent that she had no understanding of pre-war technology and should probably leave the thinking to the scribes.

_Whatever, asshole._

The photograph was clipped to a type-written document sitting on top of a file thick with papers. In the photograph she had that look on her face, and her hair was pinned up into a style more fashionable than she ever remembered doing. She wondered when it had been taken. Where they'd found it. How they knew it was her; she only remembered telling Danse her married name, and this had to be from before her graduation.

She leaned in, to see if she could find any clues. Before she could read any of the words, the Proctor shut the folder, and put it away behind him.

She let herself be led through the rest of the ship, past a doctor, a quartermaster, an engineer. All the lessons about how to remember names, faces, facts, still there. But all she wanted was to sit with her bottle and just think, just be quiet, just be left alone.

She almost had the chance. Crates piled high in a dark corner, Danse busy talking to the engineer about some part of his armor that had been giving him trouble. There was nobody else around, and they weren't paying her any attention. She could have just slipped over there, taken the bottle from her pack. Numbed her throat, and maybe the noisy bit her of her mind along with it.

No, she thought. I'm not going to do it. I'm not going to hide in a corner and drink straight from the bottle. This world hasn't broken me yet.

I've got a job to do.


	3. Chapter 3

Tuesday  
15:00

The sun burns onto his face and through his clothes. It glares into his eyes, both directly from above and reflecting from the stone walkway on which he stands. His eyes aren't adjusting to the brightness, not like they should. If he could shade his face, perhaps it wouldn't hurt so much. But one of his hands is useless, and the other is holding him upright. He can move or see. Not both at the same time.

So his progress is slow, and cautious. He has to pace himself. If he moves too quickly, he might draw attention from the mutants still up there on the hospital building. But he can't go too slowly, either. If he does, his injuries or heatstroke or dehydration might get him first.

No. He's not going to let that happen.

He's not done yet.

The wall he's leaning on, and woke up against, borders a reservoir, or maybe a canal. It's stagnant and full of junk here, but opens out beyond into glittering water that reflects even more light into his eyes. But it must lead into the river that flows south, and eventually toward the airport. He may be able to follow it back, if a rescue isn't sent out within a few days.

Too early to think about that yet.

The wall is broken, many of its heavy stone blocks toppled into the stinking mud below. When he can't rely on the wall to support him, he has to stumble to the next block, every step with his left foot a fresh set of teeth clamping around his knee. Every counterweight movement with his right arm another bullet in his shoulder.

The wound on his forehead has started to bleed again, dropping red circles onto the ground as he moves. He looks back. His feet are leaving bloodied scuffs in the dust, tracking his movements like a trail of breadcrumbs. With any luck a rescue will follow it before the mutants do.

He balances carefully to shield his eyes again, just for a moment. Up ahead, the wall turns off to the right; the roof still just a pair of dark triangles beyond it. The whole area is quiet, and still. He listens carefully, just to make sure. Silence, except for the gentle lapping of water, and the occasional breath of wind scattering fragments of dust and dead grass. Nothing else.

Keep moving, he thinks. Come on.

He reaches the end of the wall, and takes stock. The roof belongs to a two-storey house, jutting out over the water. In front of it, a low, squat building, topped by a small wind-powered generator. No other signs of habitation. No turrets, whirring around to spit bullets at him. No spikes, or corpses pinned up in obscene displays of raider brutality. Nothing moving except for the blades on the generator, spinning slowly away. Deserted.

He edges toward the road in front of the house, keeping his fingers on the wall for support as long as he can. Just as he's about to let go, a low, dark shape runs out into the road. A dog. It's big, and powerful, pointed ears held high. He braces himself. If it attacks, he'll have to let go of the wall to pull the knife from his boot. Not that he has the strength to use it.

It moves toward him, cautiously, nose lowered. It pauses, a front paw raised as if tracking. Then it backs away, back toward the house, barking as it goes. Its master must be inside.

He curses, to himself, at himself. It was foolish of him to think that the place would be abandoned. Every half-defensible shack in the Commonwealth seemed to contain a half-dozen drifters armed with guns and fuelled by rage. And this has the water, stretching all around it, an impenetrable barrier for anyone susceptible to rads or whatever other poisons are contained in it. An excellent position, if fortified.

Now, as a door slams, he doesn't have time to think about why it isn't. He looks around for routes of escape, and finds none. All is bare dirt and dead trees, not a trace of cover. He can only hope that whoever is inside is merciful enough to grant him aid. Or a quick death.

A figure comes out into the road. A woman, without the shape of a weapon by her side, wiping her hands on a rag. Her hair glows bright and golden in the sun. She bends down to talk to the dog, her words inaudible. Then looks over at him.

No. It can't be.

She straightens up, her hand rising to cover her mouth.

Not her. Not here. He must be delirious. He must be dreaming.

As she begins to walk toward him, he checks.

He's not.

~~~

She'd heard the crash, and thought little of it. Just another set of idiot Gunners flying too close to a mutant den. Hardly a rare occurrence, in the Commonwealth. Not even that rare for the Brotherhood to be caught out in a similar fashion, certainly not as rare as it should be.

Especially when they're carrying their Elder.

For a moment, she wonders if it's finally happened. She's gone mad. Forty-six days without human interaction. She'd been talking to Dogmeat for much longer than that, true, but at least he'd never talked back.

She'd never hallucinated anything, either.

He looks real, though.

Bloodstained and covered in dust, eyes full of pain and confusion, he shakes his head as she approaches and tries to back away from her. He's slow and dazed, enough for her to catch his elbows. He growls when her left hand touches him; a bloodstained tear in the shoulder of his coat tells her why, too late.

He'll never accept her help, if she offers. Not now. So she ducks to her right, wraps an arm around his back, and gives him no choice. She walks him toward the house, supporting as much weight as she can. Solid as a rock, he is, and about ten times as heavy. But she gets him up the steps, through the door and only lets go when they're right in front of the couch.

He falls back onto it with a grunt of pain.

She has nothing. No stimpaks, no bandages. The house had been stripped by looters and the elements long before she'd arrived. She searches through cupboards, checks under furniture, then finally remembers. One small tin of medical supplies stuck to the wall of the bathroom. What had been the bathroom, at any rate.

She almost trips up the stairs in her haste to fetch it. Inside are two stimpaks, a short length of gauze, and a faded packet of pills. Not enough. Surely not enough for this mess.

His leg is bloody and chewed, his boot in tatters. Whatever damage has been done to his shoulder is hidden beneath the coat; but to have broken through that must have taken a hell of a shot. There's dried blood all down the side of his face from a graze above his right eye, fresh blood now dripping backwards over his ear and onto the couch.

Stay calm, she tells herself. It's alright. Don't imagine what will happen if he dies on your couch. Don't imagine how it will look to the Brotherhood. Just do what you can.

And whatever you do, don't think about how it will feel.

She kneels to jab one stimpak into his leg, into the least bloody patch of flight suit she can find. He curses, violently, his hand clenching to a fist by his side. She pulls the collar of the coat back as gently as she can, and jabs the second stimpak into his shoulder, close to the wound. Maybe too close, as he spits out curses, more distinctly than before.

She tries to read the packet, then holds it out to him. "I think this is Med-X," she says. "It might be an idea to take some, just to take the edge off."

"No," he says, pushing her hand away. "No chems."

She puts it on the couch beside him, and forces a smile. "Okay," she says.

On the coffee table, there's a pile of rags that she'd been using to clean up the parts for the purifier. She finds one that's reasonably free of grease. It might have been part of a man's shirt once; narrow grey and blue lines on a white background. She presses it onto the side of his face, down the side of his neck.

He pushes her hand away again. "Stop it," he says. "I'll do it myself."

He's arguing, she reassures herself. That means he's alright. Right?

She puts the rag into his hand. "Okay," she says. "There's a washstand upstairs with a bit of water. There are a couple of suitcases with clothes in, too. Wear what fits, use anything else to clean yourself up. Do you need me to help you up the stairs?"

He leans forward onto his knees, and looks at her, poised as though he might be about to say something. But he just shakes his head.

She replies with a nod, and leaves him. Steps out onto the veranda, leans on the railings. She breathes, carefully. Wills herself to be calm. Looking down at the water, she notices the color of her hands. Red. With his blood.

Despite the heat, a chill runs down her spine.


	4. Chapter 4

January 22nd, 2289

After their first successful mission together, Danse had given her his laser rifle. Righteous Authority, he'd called it, and he didn't even have the decency to blush when he told her.

When she'd adjusted it to work better left-handed, he'd been impressed. When she'd later modified it to increase the damage, he'd been astonished.

"Forty-three percent," he'd kept saying, shaking his head. "Outstanding."

It was almost like he hadn't noticed all the time she'd spent watching him work on it, or on his replacement weapon (Righteous Authority II, of course). Or the amount of time she'd been spending in engineering. Any time that she wasn't out in the field, she'd try to go there. Repairing weapons, modifying them, and learning as much as she could. For good or ill, she had a feeling it would come in handy, one day.

Besides, it was good to have something constructive to do while waiting for Valentine to turn up clues about the Courser. But then, in the middle of January, he had. His note was tucked into the lining of her jacket. A cordial invitation to Diamond City.

She knew she had to go alone. She'd mentioned it to Danse, _oh by the way, I have to go do something, you don't need to come with me, right?_ He'd looked at her worriedly, muttered something about getting permission, but nothing about how to get it. So she waited. Waited for things to fall into place around her, as though her life had spun totally out of her control, and she were a mere pawn in the middle of it.

What a crazy notion.

She knelt to pick up a screw that she'd just dropped for about the tenth time that morning. It was tiny, her hands were covered in grease, and there was a winter storm outside blowing hard enough to make the Prydwen rock in its moorings. She let out a sigh of annoyance.

"Any time you need to take a break," said Ingram, "you just let me know. Or run gagging to the door, I know armor grease gets pretty pungent when it's warm."

On a recent mission, part of her armor frame had been damaged, and it had seemed like a perfect opportunity for a lesson. Ingram wasn't a natural teacher, but she got her point across, and she was good to talk to. She also understood the importance of comfortable silence. Concentration is key when it comes to things that can easily spark and catch fire.

If Ingram was talking, she'd probably noticed her student's level of distraction.

She tried to focus on her task, but just as the thread was about to catch, the wind blew, or her fingers shook, or some malicious sprite knocked it out of her grip.

This time, she caught the screw before it hit the floor.

"The smell doesn't bother me at all," she said, glaring at the screw, willing it to behave. "It takes me back, actually. My father liked to work on cars, kind of a hobby of his."

"Armor grease bringing back pleasant memories?" says Ingram. "That must be a first."

"Well, it's not the same grease," she replied, sitting back on her haunches. "This is military grade, so it's extra-pungent. But it is similar. Brings back the same feeling. Being about nine years old. High summer. Wanting to run around in the sun, but knowing that mom would tell us off if we did. My sister would sit in the house and watch TV with her, but I'd go out to the garage and watch my father work. All I'd see for hours was an ass and a pair of legs, hanging out of the car. Every now and again, a hand would pop out and there'd be a muffled 'beer' or 'screwdriver' or whatever."

She picked up the screwdriver again. Almost immediately, the screw fell to the ground with a tiny _plink_ , and lodged itself into the gap between two metal floorplates.

"God damn it," she said. "I'm useless. You should just throw me off the ship right now, put me out of my misery."

When she stood up, the smile on Ingram's face was wider than she expected. And it only widened as the engineer looked at a point behind her, just over her right shoulder, and nodded.

"Elder," said the Proctor. "What a pleasant surprise."

~~~

He had been speaking to Paladin Danse in the mess hall; not a debriefing, just a chance encounter. He enjoyed speaking with Danse. The man was straightforward, uncomplicated. Naturally, conversation had turned to his most recent mission. And to the Knight.

The Paladin told him about a request she'd made.

"You have concerns about her competence?" he'd asked.

"Absolutely not," said Danse.  
  
"About her trustworthiness, then?" He watched for signs of discomfort, beyond the expected response to the question, signs that perhaps he knew more than he wanted to let on.

There was nothing of the sort.

"No," said Danse, his brow furrowed. "Not at all. It's the information that bothers me. If she can't share it with us, how can we be sure of its legitimacy? She could be walking right into a trap."

The Paladin clearly believed this would be unintentional. And it certainly seemed that she had no love for the Institute. The story of her husband and son was most tragic, if true.

That was the problem. It was fair to say that the _if_ was becoming smaller, but it could not be entirely discarded, not yet. They had uncovered fragments of her past in such disparate places that it would be almost impossible for them to have been planted. The most recent had just been retrieved in the depths of a school building. A picture of two girls with yellow hair and the same surname, the smaller of the two with her arms wrapped tight around the other. _Elizabeth (10) and Colette (7)_ , said the caption. _Joint winners of the Malden Kindergarten Science Prize, 2060_.

The item had turned up in a standard sweep-and-retrieve. It was so personal that it felt like prying. So he'd gone to talk to her, face-to-face. For only the second time since her arrival.

"Knight," he said, when she turned around. "A word."

Her cheeks flushed, but her face remained calm. She grabbed a cloth and wiped her hands.

"Paladin Danse has been telling me about your handiwork," he said.

"He has?" she asked, seeming surprised.

"A forty-three per cent improvement in damage," he said. "On an already-optimised laser rifle. Very impressive."

Her eyes dropped. "Not really," she said.

Modest too, he thought.

Then she looked up and caught his eye, her cheek twitching into a smile. "I was aiming for fifty."

Some of her hair had come loose from its tie, curling softly around her cheeks. It was not as dark as he'd first thought; under the bright lights of the engineering bay, it shone like strands of gold.  
  
"I like your ambition," he said.

She focused her attention on her hands again, and he tried to focus himself back on his own task. The request.

He pulled himself together. "Paladin Danse also said you'd requested to go into the Commonwealth again. Alone."

"That's right," she said.

He asked why.

She rolled the rag in her hands. "What did he tell you?"

"I'm asking you," he said.

She nodded, just slightly, and looked around, as though she were checking for other ears. Only Ingram was nearby. He would trust the Proctor with almost anything, and the Knight clearly thought the same.

"The Institute," she said. "I've had contacts looking out for information, and they may have a lead. I need to go speak to them in person, and it'll be easier alone. At least..."

She looked uncomfortable, for a moment.

"Go on," he said.

"It'll be easier without a Brotherhood uniform behind me," she said. "I was in Diamond City shortly after the Prydwen arrived. There were a lot of nervous people and nervous people don't like to open up."

It made perfect sense. He should probably have consulted the Proctors and Kells, but he felt inclined to trust her, even as she wound the rag around her fingers and avoided his eyes.

"You have your clearance," he said. "Don't make me regret it."

She nodded and turned back toward her armor.

"One more thing," he said. "You mentioned a sister."

She stopped, mid-turn, and looked back at him. "Yeah," she said. "Betty. I worshipped the ground she walked on, even as she ran ahead of me to kick dust in my eyes. Older siblings, you know. Why?"

"A team found a photograph," he said. "It may be of the two of you."

"Oh my God," she said, her eyes wide. "Really? Where is it, can I see it?"

Any semblance of a mask was entirely gone. Her face was happiness. Excitement. Joy. He couldn't remember the last time anyone had looked at him like that. If anyone ever had.

He turned away. It wasn't about him. "Of course," he said, clasping his hands behind his back, pressing ragged fingernails into his palm. "I'll tell Quinlan to make it available to you."


	5. Chapter 5

Tuesday  
20:00

He opens his eyes to a jolt of nausea, disoriented and confused. For the last ten months, he's woken to the usual murmurings of the Prydwen, the bedframe creaking every time he moves. The first thing he sees always the same metal walls, and the same metal ceiling.

Now, there's no sound, or none that he can hear. The walls are wood, covered in torn and faded paper that only just remembers a pattern of flowers and leaves. Above, the ceiling and roof have been almost entirely torn away, replaced by a few strips of fabric, bedsheets perhaps, stretched out and held in place by twine. In every direction, a crack or patch of bare sky shows through, fading from blue to violet.

The pain in his limbs is fading too. He shrugs his shoulder and moves his foot; he's relieved to find them both aching but mobile. His head still throbs, every movement of it sending sparks of light flickering over his vision. He should find some water. Or something stronger.

He sits up. He's washed, bandaged, dressed in faded but clean pre-war clothing. When did that happen? He remembers climbing the stairs. A washbasin filled with blood. A bullet, clattering on porcelain. His body, collapsing to the floor? He sees his own hands, wiping blood and dust from his skin. But are there more, helping him?

Perhaps that's a memory from longer ago. As time goes on, they all start to meld together.

He gets to his feet, steadying himself on the patterned wall. It's damp under his touch, and leaves greasy traces on his fingers. He wipes them on his pants, and looks around the upper floor. Opposite, just a couple of chairs. Around the corner, a bathroom of sorts. The washbasin and bath are both stained with blood. His coat and flight suit lie folded on the floor nearby. Across from that, a desk and a sturdy chest with pale scratches around the lock. He tests it; it doesn't open.

He stands over the desk. Pencil shavings are scattered on the floor all around it, but the surface is clean. On it is a half-empty bottle of vodka and a few pencil stubs, the longest barely a couple of inches long. But no paper. No files. A bare bulb hangs above it, the fixture seemingly ripped from a table lamp and nailed into the wall, the wire leading out through a broken window.

This is where she's been, how she's been living. A single mattress, under a makeshift roof. An underpowered generator and no defences. Just her and the dog.

She's chosen this, over the Brotherhood.

It hurts. More than he wants to admit.

He looks out of the window. A rising moon reflects on the water, with far less violent a glittering than that of the sun, earlier in the day. And a yellow light glows up from under the veranda.

He heads down the stairs, having to lean more heavily on the handrail than he expected. It creaks and shakes under his grip, and he has take care on every step. As he reaches the bottom, he can see her through the broken windows, cigarette in her hand.

He crosses through the bare rooms of the lower floor and steps out into the open, smelling damp wood and fresh smoke, hearing little more than his own breath and the heart beating in his ears. A breeze blows gently over the water, hardly rippling the surface. This might have been beautiful, once. When the trees on the opposite bank were in full leaf, when the distant buildings were whole.

Even with the destruction softened by twilight, it's impossible for him to imagine.

At the end of the veranda is a patio table with two chairs. She's sitting in one, with a rough blanket thrown over her shoulders. The light he'd seen from above comes from two industrial lights held onto the wall with zip ties and oversized nails, haphazardly strung together with frayed wire.

She glances back at him as he approaches. "Are you alright?" she asks, pulling out the other chair.

He's not. But he nods anyway, and sits.

The dog is lying under the table. It reaches out its nose, and pushes it against his leg, just for a moment. It's strangely comforting.

~~~

She pours out another drink for herself, and a first one for him. She offers him a cigarette, too; probably not the best idea after a headwound but he takes it. The flame shimmers in the air. His hands must be shaking.

"What happened?" she asks.

He confirms her suspicions, in a few gruff words. The mutants up at the hospital are notorious, on the ground and in the air. She counts herself lucky that they haven't yet come down to the boathouse to see whether there's anything tasty living inside. There are enough caravans and raider gangs around Malden to keep them fed, not to mention the synths for easily-accessible target practice. But it's probably only a matter of time.

"How many did you lose?" she asks.

"Two," he says.

"I'm sorry," she says. "Where were you headed?"

"Does it matter?" comes the reply. It's harshly spoken, but weary at the same time. Defensive, almost.

She looks away, and lights her cigarette. "I guess not," she says.

But it does. There must be a reason for him to be travelling this far north again, and on a such a poorly-planned flight path. Everyone knows to stay away from Medford. And what was left, to the north? The recon bunker was empty, stripped of all supplies after she'd encouraged Brandis to return to his brothers. General Atomics didn't seem like it would interest them. And it couldn't be Zimonja, surely. How would they know anything about it? Even the caravans had no idea of its existence, so the Brotherhood couldn't possibly have a clue.

It doesn't make sense. None of it makes sense. That's him. Arthur Maxson. Sat there beside her in a plaid shirt and a pair of jeans. That's confusing enough, without trying to work out motives.

"What are you doing here?" he asks.

"I've been fixing up a purifier," she says. "There are a couple of settlements nearby that don't have a stable water supply of their own. If I can get a purifier up and running, it can service both of them. Plus, the building itself is pretty solid, so it could be a settlement itself, in time. I'm just laying the groundwork."

Positive. Constructive. Well-rehearsed.

It's mostly true.

"Have you been here the whole time?" he asks.

"Pretty much," she says.

That's less true.

He places his mug on the table, his fingers clasped tight around it. "While you've been here," he says, "the Brotherhood has continued with its mission. Our mission."

She tunes out. Looks across the water, and lets him talk. She knows what he's saying. It's going to be all Liberty Prime. The Institute. Probably Bunker Hill, too.

She did what she could. She always did what she could. Until she couldn't any more.

"Are you even listening?" he says, breaking through her thoughts.

She rubs her thumb along the side of her mug. "Yes," she says. "You're trying to remind me of my responsibilities."

Just like the Minutemen. Just like the Railroad.

Just like the Institute.

"I shouldn't have to try," he says. "Your allegiance to the Brotherhood should come first."

But it doesn't. Not any more. She knows it, and he knows it. And both of them know why.

There's a long, awkward moment of silence.

"My first duty is to the Commonwealth," she says. It sounds hollow.

He pushes the mug away, carefully, deliberately. Probably gathering his thoughts so he can continue to berate her. So before he can speak, she looks him right in the eyes.

"Don't," she says.

He rubs his hand over his eyes. Then he stands, abruptly, scraping the chair back over the decking.

"This isn't over," he says. "We're not done yet."

After he's gone, Dogmeat rests his chin on her knee, letting out a low whine.

"I know, boy," she says. "I'm sorry."


	6. Chapter 6

February 16th, 2289

The sky was gloomy and grey, almost as dark as the iron skin of the Prydwen. He dropped down from the vertibird, stepping away a few paces before lighting up a cigarette. This was the first time in weeks that he'd gotten to go down to the ground, to breathe air that wasn't stale and filled with grease.

He inhaled the smoke, silently acknowledging the irony of his choice.

He crossed the airport base, boots splashing across the wet concrete. It had been raining solidly for two weeks, pools of rainwater collecting in every dent and crack in the ground, until it spilled over and drained away toward the sea in muddy rivulets. Though it had stopped raining for the moment, there was no hint of sun behind the clouds, no suggestion that the weather was about to improve. Only a brief interlude in the dingy Commonwealth winter.

Proctor Ingram had stopped coming up for her briefings, sending concise bullet-pointed messages with squires instead. It was an accommodation he was more than happy to grant. Her last message, brief as it was, had suggested that he might like to take a trip down to the ground and see how work was progressing.

So there he was.

The hangar doors were wide open, revealing crates and boxes stacked up inside to a height well above his own head. Ingram was directing a few of her team, giving out instructions, pointing them at their next task. She looked up as he approached, and smiled.

"Good to see you, Elder," she said. "We're just laying the groundwork for Prime's gantry. I thought you might like to see."

It was another step forward, and a vital one. With Liberty Prime operational, the Institute's destruction at the hands of the Brotherhood would be inevitable.

Provided they could locate it.

Ingram walked him through the hangar, explaining plans and orders of work, material requisitions and new teams. While she talked, he became aware of a disturbance outside. He noticed a young soldier ducking his head out of the hangar, then sidling out, perhaps thinking he couldn't be seen.

MacKay. Scribe-Initiate. Barely 19, if he recalled correctly.

He excused himself from the Proctor, and went to find what was happening. Outside, a half dozen soldiers were crowded around the gate. A dark shape barked and darted off across the concrete; a dog. Big, powerful, with pointed ears held high. It ran back to the group, and dropped a ball from jaws filled with bright teeth.

He felt a surge of irritation at such frivolity.

"What's the meaning of this?" he said, approaching the group. "Get back to your duties."

The crowd dispersed, with apologetic muttering. The culprit was left standing alone, eyes lowered, circles of red on her cheeks. She had a pack on her back, and was awkwardly shifting the weight of it over her shoulder.

Travel-stained and tired as she evidently was, it was good to see her.

He bit back the smile before it could touch his face.

"Knight," he said. "Were you successful in your mission?"

She nodded, and dropped the pack to the ground to pull out a file. Her hand shook as she gave it over to him. Inside were schematics, diagrams, and instructions. Rough as they were, the sketches depicted an impressive-looking device. It was entirely beyond his comprehension.

"Teleportation," she said, as if expecting the question. "It's how the Coursers get in and out so easily. It uses radio waves."

The way into the Institute. She'd actually found it, and delivered it right into his hands. He couldn't ask for more.

"Knight," he said, "you never cease to impress."

She blinked, and met his gaze with bloodshot eyes. She gave another nod, and perhaps the faintest of smiles.

The dog pattered around to her side and stared up at him. He ignored it, returning the file to her hands, watching as she carefully wrapped it and replaced it in her pack.

"Get the file to Ingram, right away," he said. "She's in the hangar. Tell her to divert all resources to this, once she's verified the plans."

She shouldered the pack, and lowered her eyes. "Of course," she said.

~~~

Her boots were soaked through, her toes numb with cold. A split seam on the shoulder of her jacket had allowed a sliver of wet to ooze through into her shirt and to her skin. Every step took more effort than the last, but she forced her feet to move toward the hangar.

After a few, she realised that Dogmeat wasn't with her.

She stopped, and looked over her shoulder. He was still sat in front of the Elder. She knew the exact look that would be on the dog's face. Covered in mud and stinking to high heaven, there hadn't been a single person yet who could resist it. At least not anyone worth paying attention to.

For a long moment, neither party broke eye-contact. The one with his hands clasped behind his back. The other, with his tail wagging over the wet concrete. A stand-off, of sorts.

Then Maxson reached down and gently scruffed the dog's ears.

She felt the smile start before it reached her face. She turned and kept walking toward the hangar. Dogmeat caught up with her, looking up with those same eyes as if to say _are you proud of me?_

"I am, boy," she said, scritching his neck. "I am."

Handing over the file to Ingram was a wrench. On the journey back from the Glowing Sea, she'd had to constantly resist the urge, paranoid as it was, to pull open her pack and check on it again and again. She'd wrapped it in several layers of plastic, tucked it into the middle of her spare clothes, well away from anything that could rip or tear the paper. This was the ticket into the Institute, and it lay in her hands.

She'd been so worried about something happening to it, of the schematics and diagrams being ruined before she could get them back to the airport. After a while, she'd had to remove all liquids from the pack, just to try to quiet her mind. Someone observant passing Egret Tours Marina right about now might be lucky enough to find a very interesting cache of water, oil, glue and a near-empty bottle of vodka.

She wasn't even sure if bringing it to the Brotherhood was the right thing to do. They had the resources, they had the skills, but what she'd learned while obtaining the file had made her second-, third-, fourth-guess herself. Farms being pressured into handing over crops, ghouls being verbally abused, and that was just what Piper had been able to verify. There were a lot more stories out there, most of them a lot less flattering.

But in the end, all she'd wanted was to get back, to curl up in her bunk. To let the sounds of the Prydwen's engines and the comings and goings of vertibirds lull her to sleep. If it was the wrong decision, something would happen to stop her doing it. It always did.

Ingram was ecstatic, leafing through the file, shaking her head at every new revelation. "Where did you get these?" she said. "I know you can't say, but that doesn't mean I'm not going to ask."

She tried to reply, but her words turned into a cough. She leaned back against a packing case, taller than her, stronger than her, feeling cold metal against the back of her head.

"You've taken a few rads, haven't you?" said Ingram. "Well, now I know the general area at least. Look, I get that this is important, but you've got to look after yourself. We're counting on you. Why don't you leave the file with me, and go on up to Cade."

The room started to spin. "I'm not putting Dogmeat on a vertibird," she said. "I'll be fine."

"Leave him down here with me," said Ingram. "I'll look after him. Nice to have something with a bit of a personality around the place for once. Now go on, before you irradiate all of us."

"I'll be fine," she said, shaking her head, trying to shake away the grey. Everything was so grey, and so dark. But it was the morning. Wasn't it? She looked at her knees, wondering why they were in front of her face. That's not where they were a moment ago. That's not where they were supposed to be.

"Shit," said Ingram, her voice coming from a long way away. "Arthur, get over here. Give the girl a hand."


	7. Chapter 7

Wednesday  
11:00

Five hours she's been awake. Or up, rather. It's only five if you don't include all the hours before that, huddled up in the corner of the boathouse trying to forget about who's lying up there in the other building.

Not like she ever really sleeps, anyway.

She shakes her head and focuses back on the purifier, her fingers sore from all the failed attempts to twist wires around connections that don't want to be connected. A muscle in her thigh is twitching from the odd posture, having to half-crouch, half-stand to reach the control panel. Putting the purifier inside the boathouse itself had seemed like a good idea at the time, why leave it out in the open where anyone could see it. If she'd known it would be this awkward, she might have decided differently.

She shifts on her heels. Her foot slides out and just knocks against the handle of the screwdriver. It circles lazily on the decking, and with her fingers wrapped in the wiring, she can only watch as it falls into the water with a splash.

Extricating her fingers, she looks around for the usual rag, wrapping it and rubbing it over her hands, concentrating on the texture of the fabric and smell of the grease on it. Once she feels a little calmer, she puts it down again and rummages through the toolbox for a replacement. Nails, bolts, a wrench, a bottle of glue. No screwdriver. But right at the bottom, still in the plastic wrapping, a single stimpak.

She ought to take it to him.

Stepping outside, into the late-morning sun, she sees him on the veranda, sitting in the same seat as he had been the night before. He leans forward, rubs his hand over his eyes, and shakes his head. As Dogmeat's claws start skittering noisily over the boards, he looks around quickly and sits upright.

The act isn't much more convincing when she's standing next to him, holding the stimpak tight in her hand. His face is drawn and pale, the circles under his eyes even darker than usual, and the wound on his forehead is an angry red compared to the rest of his skin. She hopes it's not infected. She can recognise the signs, but she has no idea how to deal with it if the stimpak doesn't work.

"Let me see," she says, dropping the stimpak on the table and kneeling beside his chair.

"There's no need," he says, turning away. "It's fine."

"It obviously isn't," she says. "Come on. Let me see."

He sets his jaw firm and lets out an angry breath, but does turn to face her, closing his eyes before he does so. Strands of his hair are falling forward over his forehead. She brushes them away with her fingertips, and he flinches away like he's been hit.

"Damnit, Maxson," she says, sitting back on her heels, frustrated. "I know that me touching you is about the worst thing you can imagine, but come on."

He opens his eyes, and looks right down into hers. They may be bloodshot, but they're still as heart-stoppingly blue as ever. "You know that's not true," he says.

Her heart stops.

That's not fair. That's not _fair_. One moment, one single moment between all the orders and commands and _Knights_ and _Paladins_ and turning his fucking back on her, and she's supposed to know? A moment she'd worked so hard on forgetting, telling herself it was an accident, it was a misunderstanding, he didn't mean it like that. He couldn't have meant it like that, because if he did...

If he still does...

She closes her eyes against the thought, and against him. But it's too late, there's a ghost of a palm against her cheek, the echo of a thumb brushing over her cheekbone, and a shadowy wave of hurt washing over her all over again. Slowly, carefully, she rises to her feet and backs away, managing not to break into a run only because she doesn't think her legs will carry her.

She stops between the two buildings to collect herself. She leans on the workbench, splaying her fingers over the surface. The cold metal helps to cool the anger within her, helps to focus her mind.

If he still does...

She's made her decision already.

Maybe this is how she finds out if it's the right one.

~~~

He rips the stimpak from its packet, stabbing it into himself with unnecessary force. It courses through him, soothing the pain that lingers in his shoulder and leg, and finally clearing most of the angry stupor from his head.

Just before she'd stood back up, the color had drained from her face, as though she'd seen a ghost. As she walked away, her bare feet made no sound on the veranda, only the creaking of the old planks suggesting any movement across them.

She's not a ghost, though, thank God. He checks his teeth, touches his fingers to the table, makes absolutely certain that he's not dreaming, either. Then he traces her path around the house, the planks creaking more loudly under his weight. He finds her between the two buildings, leaning on a red-painted workbench, her hands flat on the surface.

She looks up as he approaches. After a moment she straightens up and takes five, six steps to stand in front of him. Her gaze only briefly touches his eyes before it flickers downwards, over his mouth, then down to his right, toward his hand. She takes it, turns it over as though examining it, then lifts it and presses his palm against her cheek. She holds it there, her fingers warm against the back of his, and closes her eyes.

He remembers. He understands. She's giving him a second chance.

He leans in, slowly, and touches his lips to hers. When she doesn't back away, he lifts his other hand to her face and draws her into a kiss, but one that's weak, and hesitant. He hates himself for it, but he's afraid. Afraid that he's wrong, afraid that too much will make her run.

But she doesn't bolt, or run, or back away. She rests her hands on his shoulders, and with a gentle pressure of her fingertips she pulls him down, deepening the kiss. All the while, her tongue is darting into his mouth, her teeth nipping gently at his lower lip, her lips pressing against his with increasing urgency.

He has to pull away to breathe, to gather himself. Seeing her face doesn't help - if he ever thought she was beautiful before, she's ten times more so now, rosy-cheeked and dark-eyed, out of breath and staring at his lips like she can't look at anything else.

She slides the tips of her fingers into his waistband. Her fingernails graze his skin, sending shocks right through him. She pulls his hips against hers, but rather than stop there, she pulls him further, stepping backwards until they crash heavily against the workbench. There's a clink and a smash as a glass falls off it, but neither of them give it a second glance.

He tangles the fingers of one hand in her hair, and wraps the other around her back, pulling her as close against him as he can. She lifts her foot to rest on the side of the workbench. If he reaches down, he could stroke his hand along her thigh, hook it under her knee and bring her even closer.

Even now, a voice inside his head says that he shouldn't. _Protocol_ , it says. _Decorum_.

He ignores it.

She starts unbuttoning his fly, and slips her hand inside, and everything conspires to be his undoing. The smell of the river, the warmth reflecting from the boathouse, the sound of lapping water. The gentle touch of her hand against him, and the continued sweet press of her lips on his. It's too much, it's already too much, the coil of tension in his stomach white-hot from the start.

He fights it, fights her, pressing his forehead into her shoulder to stop it overpowering him so quickly, but that just means she starts whispering in his ear. At that he's utterly lost, and moaning as he comes with his hand wrapped around hers, his knees almost buckling beneath him.

"Are you alright?" she asks, after a little while. She's stroking her fingers around the back of his neck, her fingernails grazing over his scalp.

He is, more so than he has been in months, years even, every nerve still tingling. But it's not stopping the anxiety from washing in, threatening to replace the high. _Protocol_ , says the voice again. _Decorum_.

"Come on," she says. "Look at me."

He knows he doesn't deserve the smile that crosses her face when he does. But he smiles back, and he nods, and he accepts her kiss on his temple, while the pit of guilt roils within.


	8. Chapter 8

March 6th, 2289

It wasn't painful, although it probably should have been. Her entire being, ripped apart and put back together on the other end of a stream of data. Perhaps they programmed it that way. Muscles first, nerves later. Save the brain for last, that's one way of stopping you thinking about it.

After the initial flash died away, she couldn't see or hear a damn thing. Her feet were on solid ground, but her legs hadn't quite worked that out yet. She staggered, dragging air into her lungs as though she'd just been in a vacuum. But she couldn't fall, not again. She'd fallen so many times, and getting up only seemed to get more difficult, and less worthwhile.

She reached out, hoping that the metal arm of the relay platform would be near. The darkness was one thing, but without the droning of the generators she couldn't tell what way she was facing. She'd use the sun, warm as it was on her face, but she had no idea what time it was.

She had no idea what _year_ it was.

Her heart started to hammer in her chest, her breath became ragged and fast, and hot tears sprang into her eyes. She reached out, wildly, trying to find something, anything to support her.

Her left hand met something soft, and warm, like the fleece of a lamb. With her right, she felt a cool, smooth surface that was pliant to the touch, like leather. Something took hold of her elbows, and she bit back a cry, afraid that it was there to pull her off her feet, to drag her down to the ground. But it held her. It supported her, long enough for her knees to find their strength, and for the panic to subside, at least a little.

Slowly, her senses began to return. The generators droned away, and the control terminals beeped and clicked quietly over to her side. The sun was bright in her eyes as she opened them, but she fought against it to focus on the dark figure in front of her.

"Oh," she said. "It's you."

He'd been there when she left. He'd barked orders at her and at Ingram, demanding status reports every five minutes. As she'd stepped up onto the platform, the sun had been low in the morning sky, shining right into his eyes, lighting them up. Blue and bright and utterly heart-stopping. They'd been her last thought, before Ingram turned the key and sent her down into the Institute. And here they were when she returned, stopping her heart all over again.

She'd realised a few weeks before. You tend to notice, when your heart's stopping every few days for no apparent reason. It took a while for her to recognise the pattern, but eventually she did. His eyes, her heart. It had only gotten more difficult, the more she had to see them.

"Are you alright," he asked, an unexpected urgency in his voice.

She could hear again, and she could see again. So she smiled, and nodded, and let him take her hands, while the panic still surged within.

He helped her down from the platform, to a chair that sat right next to the relay. It hadn't been there when she left, or she didn't remember it. There was an empty mug beside it, and a dozen or so cigarette butts scattered over the concrete.

"How long was I gone?" she asked.

"Thirty-two hours," he said.

Hours. Only hours. She saw the trembling in her hands before she felt it. She clenched her fists and dug her nails into her palms to control it. She didn't even know what she was feeling. Relief, maybe. Relief that she hadn't stumbled out to the crumbled ruins of another life.

Relief was supposed to feel better than this.

He rested a hand on her wrist. His gloves were warm, his fingertips cold. "It's alright," he said. "You're safe. You're home."

Home, she thought, a hollow laugh rising in her chest. Home. This wasn't home. This was so far from home as to be ridiculous. Home was people, home was a future, and all of that was gone. But so was the past, and maybe that was the good to take from this. Whoever the old man was, he wasn't her son. Shaun was gone. It was over. It was all over.

~~~

Every morning he'd told himself he wouldn't go down to the build site. But every afternoon, rain or sun, he'd found himself nodding at a pilot, hauling himself into a vertibird, then crossing the airport base. Ingram would tell him about the day's task and wait for him to ask about it.

"Talk to the Knight," she'd say, with a grin. "She's the one building it."

He had. He'd asked, and he'd listened, and he'd tried not to stare but it was hard not to think about the warmth of her eyes, or the softness of her lips, or what her hair might feel like under his fingers. But she always avoided his eyes. So he fought it, fought her, and he thought he had it under control.

Then she reappeared on the relay, and fixed those brown eyes on his, and it all came rushing back.

He helped her to a vertibird, up to the Prydwen. He sat her down on a chair in Cade's office, and sent a squire to fetch the doctor.

By the time he turned around, her head was bowed.

"I'm sorry," she said. "This is the second time you've had to carry me up here."

"It's alright," he said.

"It's not," she said. "I'm sure I'm not worth the effort."

She'd helped build the device, from plans that seemed to be written in another language. She'd willingly stood on it, not knowing what lay on the other side, when hundreds of others would have fled. What she was saying was absurd, but he didn't know what to say. Words didn't seem to do justice. So impulsively, foolishly perhaps, he touched his hand to her cheek.

Her eyes opened wide, in surprise.

He watched his thumb, as it stroked along her cheekbone, her skin soft against it. He watched her hand, as it rose up and touched gently against his. He watched her, as she leaned into his palm and closed her eyes, her lips parting in a sigh.

At the sound of footsteps in the hallway, his heart started beating again, too fast. He drew back his hand and backed away to a safe distance, nodding a silent greeting to Cade as the man entered the room.

She let the doctor examine her, and answered all his questions in a low voice. She kept glancing over all the while, her eyes full of uncertainty.

"Clean bill of health," said Cade, tapping on his terminal, transcribing his notes. "But I want her to check back in regularly, make sure there aren't any surprises waiting."

"What do you mean?" he asked.

"If what she says is true," said the doctor, "there's unlikely to be any infectious diseases waiting down there. I'm thinking more of the mental aspects. Got to be tough, knowing you've been dissipated."

Silence fell, a silence he felt he needed to fill. "Well," he said, "perhaps we'll get more information from the holotape."

But instead of breaking the silence, it deepened it. When he looked back at her, her eyes were open wide in distress.

"I assume you did retrieve it," he said, but the color had already drained from her face. He knew the answer.

It was the primary mission, and she'd failed.

He had no choice. He could not tolerate failure.

"Cade,' he said, turning away from her. "Do you foresee any problems with her travelling via the relay again."

"Not physically," said the doctor, a warning note in his voice.

"No," she said, with a crack in hers that threatened to break him.

He steeled himself against it.

He'd noted several times before that she seemed to wear a mask; it wasn't until now, setting his face hard, moderating his voice to match it, that he realised he had one of his own. It had been there for so long that it was almost indistinguishable from his own self.

He wondered when it had dropped. If anyone had noticed.

"I can't go back in there," she said, faintly. "Please don't make me."

He couldn't tolerate failure. He couldn't make exceptions. Not even for her. He clasped his hands tighter behind his back, ragged nails digging into his palms.

"You'll go back in," he said. "You'll work with them until you retrieve the holotape. That's an order."

Cade's typing had stopped, the man himself looking up over his terminal with an unreadable expression.

_No exceptions_.

He turned his back on the both of them, and left.


	9. Chapter 9

Wednesday  
19:00

Dogmeat's sitting at her feet, chewing on a broken piece of branch. Every now and again, he twists it up in the air, and pins it between his paws, his back end rising off the ground like he's taking down a vicious enemy. Satisfied that it's been subdued, he sidles up to her, side-stepping, side-pawing maybe, until the stick is just within her reach. She grabs it. She shakes it gently in his teeth, matching his playful growl. Then when he loosens them just enough for her to pull it free, she holds it up above his head as he dances in front of her, and then throws it away, laughing as he almost falls over himself, claws scrabbling on the concrete.

He settles down in the middle of the road, safely out of her reach. The prize is his, and he'll bring it back when he's good and ready.

She dangles a mug between her fingers, scratching her thumbnail over a crack in the glaze. It's nearly empty, but to fill it she'd have to get up. And it's so warm here on the steps, the sun washing over her like molten gold, the air filled with the scent of warm dust and the slight musky fragrance of sun-scorched gourds. It would be a shame to waste even a moment of it. Besides, footsteps are sounding around the back of the house. Heavy, steady footsteps, pausing when a door opens and closes again. Then they continue, getting louder until they stop just behind her.

She lets go of the breath she hadn't realised she was holding.

There had been an awkward brunch of dry Sugar Bombs and cigarettes. She'd tried to explain her laughter with a wry "you know, college", but he didn't know, how could he, and he only seemed to get frustrated when she couldn't find the words to explain. It was just another item on the list of things that she'd lost, and that he'd never had. She'd reached out, little touches of shoulder and arm to say _it's okay, I'm still here_ , but that was another thing he didn't seem to understand or like.

She'd left him to it and gone back to the purifier, and pretended to work on it. This time, it was worse, because he'd been so close, close enough for her to smell the last traces of soap on his skin, to feel the scratch of his beard against her cheek, to finally find out how it felt to be pinned under his weight. She'd gotten nothing done, and finally admitted defeat with a mugful of vodka.

He sits down beside her on the steps, turning a packet of cigarettes in his hand. He flips open the top, and holds it out to her. A truce, perhaps. She puts the mug aside, and pulls one out. She lets him light it for her, meeting his eyes as the flame sparks up. His gaze drifts down to her lips as she closes them around the cigarette, and she smiles, because at least some things never change.

"Why here?" he asks, after a little while.

"It's quiet," she says, tapping ash onto the ground. "Off the beaten track. No unwanted visitors."

She risks a glance at him, thinking maybe this time, the side of his mouth will turn up in a smile. But it doesn't. He doesn't understand her humor, he doesn't understand her, how can he. She flicks the not-quite-spent cigarette out into the road. "I need a drink," she says, resting her hand on the empty mug, preparing to rise.

"Can it wait?" he asks.

Her heart starts to hammer in her chest, and it's so loud she's sure he can hear it.

"What for?" she asks.

He leans over to touch his lips to hers, off-balance. "I'm sorry," he says. He doesn't say what for, and she doesn't much care because he's sliding his arm around her back, drawing her closer. A hand comes to rest over her hip, the thumb just brushing the skin over her waistband. It's a line of fire, one in which she'd happily let herself burn.

~~~

He doesn't understand her. The sharp glances, the quick smiles that are gone as soon as they start. The references to things he's never known, never could have known.

But most of all, he doesn't understand why she's leading him up the stairs, hand on creaking hand rail, bare feet on faded wood. He doesn't understand why she's pushing him down to the mattress with a gentle palm. He doesn't understand why she's settling herself down on his lap, her thighs pressing against his hips. She should hate him. She should want him dead. She could so easily have left him out in the road, let him expire and rot in the sun.

No. Not her. She wouldn't do that. Not even to him.

She drags him out of his thoughts. Her fingers trace lines across his brow, circling his temples, down around the back of his jaw, and tilt his face up to hers. "You frown too much," she says.

"I can't help it," he says, and it's true. There's always something to worry about. Something to doubt. Something that means he can't quite let go.

"Maybe I can," she says, and touches her thumb to his forehead. She drags it downward, over his nose, and down to pull on his lower lip. Her eyes are dark as she leans in and follows it up with an open-mouthed kiss, one she pushes into, one he has to almost fight against to stay upright.

Maybe he can try. Just this once.

She's pulling off his shirt, and he's pulling off her vest, and before he knows it she's standing in front of him entirely naked, and he's just staring. He doesn't even know when his pants came off, but it doesn't matter, all that does is that they fit together like pieces of a puzzle, even before he's inside her. She reaches down a hand, now firm, now gentle, and when she looks into his eyes and says _are you sure about this?_ he can't say yes fast enough.

Her eyes are closed, her lower lip caught in her teeth, her hair gently curling around her cheeks. She lets out a little laugh as she takes him in, slowly, gently, hot and slick and tight around him. She rests her forehead against his, and her hand on the back of his neck. She presses down against him, hard, taking him as far as he can go. For a moment, she doesn't move at all.

"Do you have any idea how good this feels?" she says, her voice hardly louder than a murmur.

He does. He certainly does. His cheeks burn, but he can't find the words, he can never find the words. Instead, he drags her back into a kiss, and grabs her hip in the hopes that she'll start to move and give him some more of that delicious friction. She does, and it's fucking incredible, more than he'd ever imagined, almost unbearably so. He fights it, again, he focuses on her, tries to ignore his own desperate need for release by helping her to hers, dipping his mouth to her breast, back up to graze teeth over her neck, tousling fingers in her hair to bring her mouth back to his.

There's a flush of pink over her chest, now, visible even in the reddening evening light. It runs right up her throat and into her cheeks. Sweat glistens on her skin, as it does on his, and with every roll of her hips she exhales with the tiniest of moans. It's intoxicating, watching her come apart, feeling himself come closer to the edge with every movement.

He helps her along with a thumb, her ragged groan and the sharp sting of fingernails telling him how well-placed it is. _Don't stop_ , they say, _don't you fucking dare stop_. He doesn't, not until she's trembling too hard to thrust against him, not until her whole body goes taut, not until she's let out a shaky curse and leaned against him, laughing into his neck.

Even then, she doesn't stop moving, her gently rolling hips and aftershocks within bringing him closer to his peak. He grips her around the waist and braces himself, thrusting erratically up into her until he follows her over the edge.

He falls back on the mattress, so limp as to almost be dead. 

She drops down beside him, and runs her fingers across his brow. She smiles,  _I told you I could help,_ and he wonders how she says it without saying a word.


	10. Chapter 10

1st June, 2289

The humming of the Prydwen's engines that night was pitched at the perfect level. It was just loud enough to encroach on every thought, just low enough for her to be able to hear what people were actually saying to her. It seemed to be shaking her to her bones, the vibrations coming right through the floor to agitate every nerve.

It had used to be a soothing sound, like the sound of the road on a long car journey. She could lie back and pretend her feet were cramped by a footwell rather than a bunk that was two inches too short. Imagine that there was an unbroken landscape rushing by outside, rather than the unmoving remnants of her city. And hope that the person who'd wake her would be her father, telling her that the car had broken down but _it's really interesting, Colette, come take a look, you might learn something._

She'd crossed the Commonwealth alone, on foot, hardly stopping to rest, barely even watching for enemies. She'd decided that if she didn't make it back, it was because she wasn't meant to. But she had. She'd trudged through the airport gate with a sense of numb resignation. Then she'd been greeted with a cheery 'congratulations for taking out the trash' and nearly vomited on the Knight's boots.

_To the victor go the spoils._

Her feet tapped loudly on the metal flooring, echoing sharply around the engineering bay. It was empty, of course, as it should have been at that time of night. Ingram and her teams would have been off-duty even if they hadn't been down below on the airport base putting the final touches on Prime.

The final touches. When she put it like that, she could almost convince herself that they wouldn't need her any more. She laughed at the thought. Of course they would. The more she gave, the more they took. Some things never change.

She walked along the line of power armor stations. Hers on the left, the suit clean and barely used. Another set, with a rank she didn't recognise. Then his, still covered in the grime and dents from their last mission. He hadn't even had a chance to clean it up.

It was strange to see it so still and cold. Four whole weeks they'd been out in the field together, _boots on the ground_ as he put it. The suit had been her companion as much as the Paladin had. She'd become accustomed to the particular little hisses of the hydraulics, and the squeak in the left elbow that neither of them could work out how to fix. She touched her fingers to it, dipped them in the grease that he'd poured on to try to lubricate the joint. She rubbed it between her fingertips. It was dark brown, and felt oddly gritty. It looked like blood.

She ran her fingers over the insignia on the breastplate. Sword, gears, and wings, stencilled onto the metal with white paint. That was supposed to be her life, now. As was the rank, painted on the lower part of the arm. Paladin. Paladin Young. She tried to imagine herself in his shoes, holding down the police station with an injured and exhausted team. Leading a team into the Commonwealth in the first place.

She couldn't. Of course she couldn't. That wasn't her. None of this was her.

Dimly, she registered footsteps entering the room. She didn't look up, didn't need to. She knew who it'd be. He'd come to watch her take possession of her prize.

_To the victor go the spoils._

Her stomach lurched at the thought. That he could say that, that he could think that of her for even a second. That hurt more than anything else. But it did help her make up her mind. She wouldn't take the suit to Danse. There was a decent set in Sanctuary already, and that didn't have the stench of the Brotherhood all over it. She'd just have to hope he got the idea by himself, or that Sturges would take the initiative. She didn't have time to send him a note. She didn't have time to send one to the Castle, either, or Diamond City, or any of the people who would probably need an explanation.

They'd all have to wait.

~~~

He stood outside his quarters, his hand resting against the door. It was late, more than late enough to retire, but something stopped him. He knew that as soon as he shut the door behind him his mind would take over, his own words repeating in his head like a song that won't be forgotten.

_To the victor go the spoils._

It was as much for the benefit of the Knights standing guard on the door as it had been for her, but she'd flinched back as though he'd hit her. Perhaps it compounded his error. Personal feelings aside, he should not have made the exception in the first place. It meant he was embroiled in a lie.

Personal feelings. It was foolish of him to have ever allowed them.

It was also foolish, when he found himself walking toward engineering, to allow himself to pretend it would be empty. Of course it wouldn't. He knew she'd be there. And she was, standing in front of Danse's power armor with one hand on the breastplate, and her head lowered. A long moment passed, in which he thought of a dozen things to say. Before he could say any of them, she turned and left, walking right past him without a word, not acknowledging him at all.

He let her go. There seemed little point in stopping her.

His feet drew him forward, toward the armor station, his footsteps sounding heavy and clumsy after hers. He looked over the suit. It was just another set of T60 armor, like all the rest, except for the bloody streaks smeared over the insignia.

A chill ran down his spine.

He turned, quickly, and walked back through the ship, toward her quarters. He didn't know what he'd say, when he was there. _Hate me_ , perhaps. _Please hate me, it's easier that way. But don't hate the Brotherhood. I don't want you as an enemy_.

The door was ajar, far enough that he could see her sitting on the bunk, staring down at the bottle of vodka held in her hands. She didn't see him, or didn't look up if she did. She opened the bottle and tipped it into her mouth, almost hesitantly. But just as the liquid began to spill into the neck and toward her lips, she stopped. She closed her eyes and lowered her hand, replacing the cap with shaking fingers.

He pushed the door open, just a little more, just to get her attention.

"Paladin," he said.

She looked at him, then, for the first time in hours. It was a sideways glance, like many they'd shared before. But this time there was no small smile, no sparkle in her eye. It was a cold, shadowy look. The circles under her eyes seemed even darker in the dim lighting of the room.

"He's dead," she said.

His stomach lurched. It hadn't even been a week.

"What?" he said. "How?"

"Not him," she said, her voice softer than her expression, her eyes drifting away. "My son."

For a brief, terrible moment, he felt relief.

"You didn't ask," she continued, turning the bottle in her hands. "Nobody did. But I thought you should know."

He stood in the doorway, entirely at a loss.

Paladin Young. Twenty-four years old. No known relatives.

"That's all I have to say," she said. "You can go now."

He was barely a half-dozen paces from the door when there was a slight, brief change to the quality of the air. He felt a knot, in his chest, and retraced his steps. Her door was still open. Everything inside was the same, except her.

She was gone.

He ordered search parties, questioned and re-questioned all on-duty guards, but none had seen her go. Hardly anyone had seen her there in the first place. Nobody had seen a flash of blue, nobody had felt a surge of static in the air. And apart from him, only Ingram would have known that it felt just like standing next to the relay.

He returned to his quarters, head spinning. He found a bottle of something, anything, and took a deep mouthful, right from the bottle. He fell back on his bunk and stared at the metal ceiling, as he had every night for a hundred nights before.

It was over. She was gone. And it was his fault.


	11. Chapter 11

Wednesday  
23:00

The sky around the edge of the makeshift roof is dark, and scattered with stars. A loose corner of the fabric flaps gently in an irregular rhythm. There must be a breeze outside, but despite the gaping holes in the walls and ceilings, hardly any of it actually reaches him. It's far too hot to be this close, he can feel the sweat collecting wherever their skin is touching. And that's a lot of places. One of her legs is draped over his, her arm is folded over his chest, her whole body pressed up close against him.

A little while ago her breathing had changed, becoming slower, steadier. Her hands had stilled, her head had fallen heavily on his shoulder. He's not sure if she's asleep but it seems like she might be. Hot as he is, he doesn't want to move her. Having her this close is too rare a pleasure. But his hand is resting on the curve of her waist, and he can't help but stroke his fingers over her skin, up to her ribs, and down to her hip bone.

She stirs, softly. Her fingers move, curling and uncurling against his chest. She lets out a sigh, her breath hot on his skin. "I'm going to get my drink now," she says, and gets up, leaving a dark, empty space beside him. She presses her fingers around his arm before she goes.

_I'll be right back._

The handrail creaks, a door opens downstairs. Her footsteps return, pacing across the floor. Then there's a click, and the light above the desk flickers on.

She has two mugs pinched between her fingers, and is reaching out for the bottle on top of the desk. She pours out, right there over the desk, mopping up the drips from the neck of the bottle with her fingers, and brings the mugs over to the mattress.

He sits up, and takes one from her outstretched hand. The vapors rise, the sharp tang of vodka strong in the still, humid air.

She sits by his side and turns to face him, leaning against his leg, running the fingers of one hand over his knee. Half of her face is lit by the orange glow of the electric light, the other half of it in shadow. Always two sides to her, the one she shows, and the one that's hidden. He wonders if she's still hiding something from him. Like the secretive contacts in Diamond City, he never found out who they were.

Or like the relay technology she'd had hidden away.

He flinches, as her fingers stray too close to the freshly-healed wounds on his leg.

"Sorry," she says.

The word comes so easily to her. He'd spent hours trying to work out how to say it, whether it would be enough. It's not. It can't be. She doesn't know how much he's sorry for. He can hardly think of it himself. To apologise is a sign of weakness. A sign that you know you're wrong. There's no room for that, in his world.

But this isn't his world. This is hers. A place she's come to be alone. A place she's come to be away from the Brotherhood. It still hurts, but he's come to realise something.

At least she's not with _them_.

So maybe she won't ever fight beside him. Maybe she won't ever sit beside him as a friend. Almost certainly he won't ever have this again, her soft skin and warm smiles. But maybe he won't have to face her across a battlefield. Maybe he won't have to raise a weapon against her. And he hopes to God that it doesn't come to that because even now, he knows he wouldn't hesitate to pull the trigger.

He turns his attention to his drink, swirling it in the mug, tossing it down his throat. It doesn't quell the thoughts, not entirely, but it does calm him a little. He focuses on the chill of the ceramic, the scratches in the glaze. He thinks about the mattress under him, the warm hand on his knee. He thinks about where he is. He's naked, under the stars. She's stripped everything from him. All the layers of protection he'd drawn around himself, gone. The Prydwen, his armored clothes, right down to the frown that always stares back at him from the mirror. And she still doesn't hate what she sees.

He covers her hand with his.

"Don't be," he says.

~~~

She holds his hand, and turns it over. She only has a few years on him, and his beard may make him look older, but her hands look ancient next to his. Her skin is dry and papery, calloused from tools and weapons, scratched by electrical wires and splintered wood.

On the rest of his body, his scars are far deeper, and far more numerous, but it's not like she doesn't have her own. One on her wrist, from baking cupcakes for her sister. One on her knee, from falling off a climbing frame showing off in front of her friends.

Relics of a gentler time.

She tries not to think about the laser burns running up her left arm, and the jagged bullet scar in her shoulder. Gifts from the bastard that killed her husband. The bastard that broke everything.

She shakes the thought away, and returns her attention to the man beside her. Before, he'd seemed reserved, shy almost. But now, he seems more confident. He pulls her close, unravelling her hair from its ties, twisting it through his fingers, holding it up to the light. Then he rakes his fingers through it, almost roughly, dragging his fingertips over her scalp with a pressure that makes her moan. She's been alone for so long, and lonely for so much longer, aching for an embrace, for a single touch, for anything. Now he caresses her neck with hands, and lips, and teeth, biting into her flesh like he wants to devour her.

He turns her, pushes her back onto the mattress, propping himself over her on one elbow. He fixes her with those blue eyes, stopping her heart, her breath, her every thought. She barely registers as he kisses down her chest, down her stomach, parting her legs and resting his cheek against her thigh. He pauses, grazes his teeth against her skin. His touch is like electricity. It courses through every part of her.

"Tell me what you like," he says.

The first thing she thinks is _you_.

Even now, exposed and weak and hopelessly lost to him, that seems too toe-curling to say out loud. She pulls herself together, and guides him, with her hand and with her voice, until she can't do anything but gasp out her appreciation. He carries on, until her orgasm rocks through her like a bomb going off.

He gets up, reaching out to press his fingers around her arm before he does.

As he walks away, she sneaks a glance from under her elbow. She only meant to catch a glimpse of him, the legendary body in motion, but she catches him doing a little more. He looks back at her, sprawled and breathless, and the side of his mouth turns up into a pleased little smile.

She waits until he turns away, then lets hers do the same.

He refills their mugs with the bottle of vodka she'd left on the desk. And now it's her turn to sit up and take the mug from his hand, to brush her fingertips against his. Her turn to watch his eyes drift over her body, watch him follow them with his hands, with himself.

He settles between her legs, teasing her at first, then easing into her, soft and slow, his eyes on hers all the while. He takes her wrist, and presses it into the mattress, and starts to drive into her with such an intensity it shakes the breath from her lungs.

The tension within her is building again, _again_ , she can hardly believe it, but not fast enough, not by the way he's gripping her wrist so tightly, biting his lip to stifle his groans, sliding his other hand under her to pull her onto him even harder. She almost wants to tell him to slow down, to wait for her, but it's so electrifying to watch him fall apart for her that she can do little else. And his last few thrusts as he curses and moans her name into her ear, as he spills himself into her, they're enough, they're just enough to send her toppling over the edge. She lets out a silent, wordless cry that probably isn't as silent or wordless as she thinks it is. She doesn't care, not any more. This is her world. She can do what she wants in it.

He looks at her, his eyes unfocused, looking as dazed as she feels. She feels an irrepressible urge to laugh, can't stop it spilling out, but at the same time she clutches at him with her arms, keeps her legs wrapped tight around him. She'll have to let him go, and soon. But not just yet.


	12. Chapter 12

August 5th, 2289

The folder was more than an inch thick, by now. It contained all the information they'd uncovered of her pre-war life. All the mission reports from her time as Knight. And all the intel gathered since she'd disappeared.

Or the lack of it.

If he were to open the file, he'd see her face. He'd see her tightly-pinned hair and the serene expression, the one he hated so much, the one that said she didn't care what he thought of her. It was better, perhaps, than the harrowed expression she'd worn the last time he saw her. But it wasn't the one he wanted to see. Not by a long way.

Perhaps he could draw his attention to the picture of her as a child, throwing her arms around her sister. Her sister, who reminded him so much of Sarah, with her grey eyes and confident expression.

Or perhaps he could torture himself a little more with the marriage announcement. A dusty, half-scorched photograph retrieved from the offices of a pre-war newspaper. Hand-in-hand with a clean-shaven man in a military uniform. Looking lovingly into each others' eyes.

_Mr N.R. Young and Miss C.L. Martin_ , said the caption. _Married April 22nd, 2074_.

He wasn't sure which of the photographs he hated the most. Or which one he'd stared at for the longest.

He left the folder closed. This was the routine, the contract. Go to Quinlan, ask for information, receive none. They'd tried everywhere. The Castle, Diamond City, even Goodneighbor. Nobody had any idea where she was. They seemed just as concerned, just as clueless. Every day, it became more likely that she was lost, dead, chewed up by the Commonwealth that she insisted on calling her home.

But he didn't want to believe it. He couldn't believe it. Not until he saw it with his own two eyes.

So he kept on asking.

"Still nothing?" he said, brushing his fingers over the cover of the folder.

Quinlan nodded, but removed his glasses and started to polish them on a piece of cloth, drawing in a deep breath before he spoke again. "A potentially significant amount of nothing," he said. "Sir."

A knot of tension curled in his throat. "Explain," he said.

"Sanctuary," said the Proctor, replacing the glasses on his nose, and lifting his eyes. "No information has been forthcoming for weeks, despite our various... encouragements. The walls have gone up. Or the shutters have come down. We should seriously consider the possibility that she is there."

It made sense. It was the location of her old home. And it was only natural that any settlers would rally around her. Protect her from her enemies. He hated the idea that he might be counted among them.

But what if it wasn't _her_ they were trying to protect.

What if they were pulling the blinds closed around something _she_ wanted to protect?

"Sir," said Quinlan, bringing him back to the present. "If I might recommend a course of action."

"Go on," he replied, his mouth dry.

"We send a delegation," said the Proctor. "A diplomatic mission, if you will. Someone with whom she has a connection. Brandis, perhaps. Or the remaining crew from Cambridge."

He could have nodded. Sent such a crew. But if it were Danse there... his lie would be discovered. It would compromise him in ways he couldn't even imagine. Perhaps it would be better that way. For the lie to be found and snuffed out, while he sat safely on the Prydwen, safe in his authority.

_Paladin Young lied. Paladin Young is a deserter. Paladin Young is our enemy._

But then he'd certainly never see her again. He'd never have the chance to say what he wanted to say.

Not that he even knew what that was.

He flipped open the folder. None of the photographs took precedence. It was just... her. That's all he could think of. He had to see her. He had to find her.

"I'll go myself," he said.

A small crew. Just himself, and a pilot. Perhaps one more, to be safe. Small enough to be self-sufficient, but not so many as to draw attention or alarm. The same crew as had accompanied him to the listening post. They'd stayed back, known their place. If they'd had any idea what had transpired, they'd never whispered a word of it.

Yes. That was it.

"Are you certain, sir?" said Quinlan. "We are at a critical point of the campaign against the Institute."

"Precisely," he said.

~~~

She sat at the desk, a blank sheet of paper spread out before her. The only thing she'd added to it in the last two hours were a dirty smudge from the palm of her hand, and a single splash of vodka in one corner, dribbled from the bottom of her glass after an unsteady pour.

_The light_ , she thought. _The light isn't good enough. That's the problem._

She reached for the light switch. As she flipped it on, the bulb flared up brightly for a moment, then died out. There was a bang, from outside.

"Damn it," she said.

She wandered out to the side of the house, glass in hand. The fusebox was down right on the floor, a stupid place to put it when your house is built over water, even she could recognise that. She put down her glass on the workbench, balanced herself with a hand on the metal surface, and flipped the switch. The other lights around the house flickered back on, glowing yellow against the dark blue of the sky.

Dusk. Another day done. Another day wasted. And she'd told herself she'd make the decision that day. Just as she had the day before, and the day before that. Countless days of indecision, except they weren't countless, there had been forty-five of them. Forty-five since she'd relayed herself out of the Institute and turned off the Pip-Boy to stop them tracking her. Forty-five since she knew what her decision had to be. Just... not quite how to do it.

She dug out a spare bulb, went back inside, and replaced the light above the desk. She replaced herself in the seat in front of it.

"You okay, boy?" she asked, leaning down to check on Dogmeat, who was sprawled on the floor under it. "Must be hard to wear a fur coat in temperatures like these."

His tail thumped noisily on the floorboards. He sneezed on her foot.

She nodded. That was as good as a yes.

She turned the paper sideways and tested the point on a pencil she'd sharpened eight times already. She propped the Pip-Boy up in front of her, twisting the dial until it showed the map, zooming in on the middle of the city. She traced the river, the bridges, and the roads. Marked out a few key spots. Bunker Hill, the Airport, Diamond City. Then a star, right in the middle of them.

Mass Fusion.

Forty-nine days before, a synth had reached out to her with fear in his eyes. She'd tried to help, but they hadn't listened. They'd dragged him away to be 'reconditioned'. They'd made her watch.

At least Maxson had shown some mercy. Briefly.

She turned the dial to another screen, one with the internal layout of the building. As she sketched out the floors, the directions they'd need, she wondered if Allie was still waiting for her, down there in the Institute. Maybe she'd already lost patience, taken a team of Coursers in. Maybe the Institute was already powered up for the next two hundred years. Game over.

She'd know by now. Surely. And if nothing else, Shaun... _Father's_ fixation on her would stay their hand. Long enough to get the file to the Brotherhood. Then... they could do what they wanted with it.

In the old days, a good old anonymous tip-off would have done it. But now, she wasn't sure how to get it to them. She looked down at Dogmeat. Maybe she could strap the file to him, send him back into the airport. They'd looked after him for nearly twenty days after she'd left, before she'd snuck up and stolen him back. He'd be safe, at least.

But would the Commonwealth?

She reached out for her glass, but it wasn't there. She must have left it outside. She picked up the bottle, unscrewed the cap, and tapped the neck on her lip for a moment, inhaling the vapors.

No.

She may have lost everything. Everything she'd ever loved, everything she could have loved.

But the world hadn't broken her yet.

She still had a job to do.


	13. Chapter 13

Thursday  
11am

Water dribbles from the output nozzle of the purifier, slowly at first, then gathering speed. She catches some of it in her hand. It's clear, and cool, chilling her skin as it collects and starts to trickle between her fingers.

Dogmeat trots over, sniffs at the liquid in her hand. Before she can stop him, he angles his nose into her palm and starts drinking from it.

"Well?" she asks. "Is it fresh?"

He presses a wet muzzle to her arm, and sneezes.

She nods. That's as good as a yes. She wipes her hands and arm on her pants and watches the flow for a little longer. Clean water, trickling onto the deck and back into the poisoned muck of the river. One day someone would hook this up to a canning station. Maybe a shower, even.

Not today.

She powers down the purifier, and scrawls a list of instructions for which bits of the casing need to be pressed in and for how long to make sure it starts. Coincidence, perhaps, that she'd been leaning on the thing when it had started, the first and second times. The kind of coincidence that just kept on happening to her. Like how the machine had waited until the hour after he'd left to burst into action. Or how she'd stumbled on the one abandoned house in the whole Commonwealth that contained a year's supply of her favourite breakfast cereal.

She rubs her jaw, hoping that the nagging pain in her molars was a coincidence, too.

She checks the power cable that snakes out of the window, making sure no traces of broken glass remain to wear through the wire if the wind gets up. Then she pats the purifier, one last time, and leaves the boathouse, her bare feet oddly loud on the decking. She locks the door behind her, giving the padlock a firm tug to make sure it hasn't rusted to pieces inside.

"Remind me that I've locked it, okay?" she says. "I don't want to have to come back and check that I remembered."

The dog tilts his head at her, and pants.

"Thank you," she says.

She heads back into the main house, and up the stairs. She empties a suitcase, and drags it over to the trunk. She props it open, transfers her spare clothes and the stash of fusion cells between the two, and picks up the Pip-Boy. Her fingers hover over the power button. They haven't come for her yet. Maybe they can't track her with it. Maybe she wouldn't end up staring down the barrel of a Courser's gun.

She tucks it into a corner of the suitcase. Not worth the risk. She doesn't need it, anyway. She knows where she's going.

The sheets flap above her, louder than they have for days, straining at the twine that's holding them down. She looks up, smiles at the sun filtering through the striped fabric, shining brightly through the holes in it. Like stars in daytime. It'd hardly been any protection against the elements, but that wasn't the point. It was her own little castle, in her own little world. Like the ones her sister used to build for her.

She nods. Yeah. Betty would be impressed by this one.

She moves around the house from room to room, making sure she hasn't left anything behind. She puts the last dregs of the vodka in a cupboard, alongside the remaining packs of Sugar Bombs. She whistles to Dogmeat, makes sure he's out in the road, then steps outside and locks the front door. There's not much point, not really, considering the shambles that the rest of the house is in. But the appearance of security and/or dereliction is important. With any luck, the scavvers will stay away for long enough for the Minutemen to arrive.

She pats the doorframe. A home for forty-eight days is still a home.

"Thank you," she says.

The sun's hot on the top of her head, and on her shoulders. She faces into it, and puts on her sunglasses.

"Come on then, boy," she says, hoisting the suitcase and slinging the rifle over her back. "Let's get going."

~~~

He tosses the pack onto his bunk, and drops down next to it. He rests his elbows on his knees, and stares at the old metal floor between his feet. It doesn't bring him any peace. But if he doesn't look at that, he'll have to look at the old metal walls. And if he falls back onto the bunk, he'll have to look at the old metal ceiling. All of them lit by soulless electric light.

He's never hated the thought as much.

The vertibird had arrived in the early morning, circling the hospital at Medford. After less than forty-eight hours of quiet, it had broken into this thoughts and his comfort like a jagged knife. And it had torn her away from him.

No. That wasn't true. She was already gone, long before he'd even hauled himself onto the ill-fated vertibird. All he'd had was a brief stay of execution.

She'd handed him the pack and disappeared, back to the god-damned purifier or whatever it was she was really hiding in the boathouse. She'd left him to walk out into the road alone. To flag down the vertibird, to tell them that the place was abandoned, that he'd been lucky to find it and a couple of hidden stimpaks.

Another lie. Add them to the rest.

Cade had been on board, fretting over him immediately. And the Knight-Captain hadn't stopped, even after they'd arrived back on the Prydwen, even after he'd been told, _ordered_ to stand down.

_I'm fine_ , he'd said, _I'm in no pain_.

There's no room for it, not alongside the anger of having to leave her behind.

He stands, clenches his fists, his nails digging into his palms. Another lie, told only to himself. He hadn't had to leave her there. He'd chosen to. He hadn't even asked her to come back with him. He'd like to think it's because he hadn't been able to find the words. But he hadn't really tried.

He'd found her for selfish reasons. He'd left her there, for selfish reasons.

So he doesn't deserve any better.

He pulls open the pack, tearing at the buckles with shaking fingers. Inside are his boots, ruined by the teeth of the mutants' hounds. His flight suit, stiff with dried blood. The knife, blunted and useless. All he has left from the mission that everyone would consider a failure, and rightly so.

No tolerance. No exceptions. _Especially_ for himself.

Just as he's about to look around for a bottle to numb his thoughts, he notices something else at the bottom of the pack. He pulls it out and places it on the table. A simple beige folder. Inside, there are a few sheets of paper, covered in neat drawings and compact handwriting. The first is a map, highlighting a point in the middle of the Commonwealth, west of the airport. The next, floorplans of a multi-storey building that seems to descend many floors below ground-level. Then schematics, diagrams, and instructions, for another device he can't even begin to understand.

Again, she's expected the question. The writing tells him exactly what it is. It's a power source. A powerful one. The last component for Liberty Prime.

He knows he should take the folder to Ingram, right away, but he can't help but run his fingers over the sheets, letting a little of the lead rub off on his fingertips. She made this, and gave it to him. Delivered it right into his hands, without him even knowing.

He could go back out to the deck, demand a vertibird, go back to the boathouse and fall on his knees to thank her.

But he won't. He knows she won't be there.

Thumbing through the sheets again, with a knot of pain in his chest, he finds something else tucked between two of the sheets. It's just a torn scrap of paper, with a few words scrawled in a hand less careful than the rest. Reading them, his mouth dries, and his heart quickens. He rubs his hand over his jaw, touches his tongue to the gap in his teeth, and re-reads the words.

_three days_   
_that's all I need_   
_don't let Ingram go in without me_

He lets go of the breath he hadn't realised he was holding.


	14. Chapter 14

September 26th, 2289  
Tuesday  
16:00

The air is mild, and humid. It carries a light breeze that caresses her skin as she lies back on the dusty concrete. A gentle warmth soaks into her legs, her chest, and her face. It feels like lying under a warm blanket. But it's the sun, shining down from the afternoon sky.

It's September. Late September. The sky this morning had been grey, giving no hints of the beautiful day to come. She still misses the colors and the smells of fall as it used to be, but if she closes her eyes, the air and the sun still feel the same, and it's almost enough to let her pretend.

The pain is barely a whisper of what it was before. There's a dull ache in her left leg, that still seems to hum through her very bones. A secondary focus in her right shoulder, a tightness to the skin, like strings being plucked with every breath. And there's another in her head, a gentle throb that hovers behind her left eyesocket.

There's barely any sound, beyond an indistinct buzzing. Maybe a creation of her ears, maybe a distant insect. A gentle pattern of breaths, some distance away. Not synthetic, not regular enough. Not human, not slow enough. And from behind her comes a whisper of something else. Something gentler.

Open water. The sea.

The thought of water brings with it a pang of thirst. Her lips are dry; she moistens them with her tongue. Her mouth is filled with the taste of daytime sleep. She swallows, runs her tongue over her teeth to try to rid herself of it.

She opens her eyes. It's bright, but not too bright through her sunglasses. Blue above, grey below. Darker shapes are scattered across the grey, slowly coming into focus.

At her feet lies Dogmeat. The dog is sprawled inelegantly on the concrete, his belly exposed to the sun. He's the source of the breathing, and it's getting heavier by the minute. By the looks of him, he's not far away from muffled barks and twitching paws, and her laughing and disturbing him from his sleep. He'd dropped down there, panting, watching her as she worked. Then when she'd pulled herself back against the wall and let her eyes close, he'd obviously decided to follow suit.

Beside him lies an open toolbox surrounded by small piles of screws and nails and other such fastenings. Beyond that, a pile of scrap, sorted on the left and unsorted on the right. She'd been going through that pile, methodically checking for reusable materials, when her concentration had started to wander, and her eyes to drift closed.

_I'll just sit back for a moment_ , she'd thought. _Rest my eyes, a little._

This has been her task, over the last couple of weeks. Reclaim the area, make it habitable, or at least try. As a settlement, the ruined airport isn't the most appealing. She hasn't been able to find a single trader willing to set up shop here, nor any settlers to buy from them. Without digging up the concrete, there's no space for crops, so farmers aren't keen, either. But she has persuaded a caravan or two to include it on their routes, luring them in with the promise of all this delicious scrap. She's had a small shack put up in the corner where they can throw their bedrolls, and a hitching post for any brahmin. It's not exactly luxurious, but there isn't much space to work with.

That's why the relay has to go. She'd thought about keeping it, maybe using it to travel around the Commonwealth more efficiently, but along with the Institute died the radio stream, and the relay signal encoded within it.

She can't say she's sad not to have to go through that ordeal again.

The terminals have already been removed and repurposed. The signal transmitter itself is in pieces; two arms already gone, one still lying in front of the base. It's been a slow process, but she's got all the time in the world. It was hard work to begin with, when her injuries were fresh, but she still had one good arm, and one good leg, and that was more than enough to start making progress.

Her left leg was broken during the attack on the Institute. A scientist had launched himself at her, enraged by her betrayal, taking them both toppling off a high walkway. A bone, or multiple bones, had been fractured in the fall, and walking through the rest of the facility on it had made the damage significantly worse. Cade had been horrified when he'd seen it, and surprised that she'd been able to continue at all.

But she'd had no choice. She had a job to do.

Later, her right shoulder had been burned badly by laser fire; a Courser, the one she had been so generously given by her 'son'. He'd arrived at the airport, soon after they'd returned from the Institute. For a moment, she'd wondered if he'd been freed, if there was some hope for him to escape his conditioning.

"Ma'am," he'd said, with a terse nod, and started firing at her.

The headaches were normal, by now. Maybe they'd fade, in time, along with the flashbacks and nightmares. Or perhaps that was just how it was going to be, for her, forever. She wouldn't be the only one.

To the victor go the spoils. With the victor remain the scars.

She knows the second half of his saying, now.

She closes her eyes again, and turns her head to warm the other side of her face. She's just drifting off when footsteps start to echo around the lot. She doesn't move to find a weapon. There's no need, the place is bristling with turrets. The ruined departure lounge is probably one of the safest places in the Commonwealth.

She keeps her eyes closed, even after the footsteps stop right in front of her.

"Sentinel," he says, sharply. "I said I had no orders for you. That doesn't mean you should be doing nothing at all."

She pretends to wake up, and pulls her sunglasses down her nose, just enough to look over them at him. A meaningful look, one that would have been lost on him just a few weeks ago.

He maintains his frown. But before even a few seconds have passed, it softens, and falls, and he almost smiles. He sits on the ground beside her, on her left hand side, his shoulder resting against hers. She feels the gentle touch of his fingers on her knee, and covers his hand with hers.

It can't be long before he has to think about the next great threat, outside of the Commonwealth. Before the Prydwen has to fly away as suddenly as it arrived. Maybe she'll go with him. Maybe she won't. But she doesn't need to decide, not yet. Something will come along, and fall in her lap, and help her make her decision.

It always does.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> as experiments go, I think this went rather well.
> 
> thank you to everyone who's left a comment and/or mashed the kudos button. I say this a lot, but you're the real MVPs. couldn't do it without you.
> 
> come say hi on [Twitter](https://twitter.com/kickerwrites) or [Tumblr](http://kickerwrites.tumblr.com/) \- let me know what you thought, or if you have any suggestions for what I can do next. :)


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